you really think so?
We begin with a Rock monologue about how Roanapur is filled with villians [悪党 (あくとう)], a metropolis/capital of wickedness [邪悪の都 (じゃあくのみやこ)] against the backdrop of the various mafiosi going about their business. There’s something quite funny and reassuring about Revy’s perpetual scowling.
Rock is waiting in the company car with Revy and Eda.
I came pretty close to dropping OtoBoku as the first half of the first episode was so excruciatingly clichéd. My suspension of disbelief was stretched pretty thin too with how Mizuho was regarded as one of the school’s beauties. I love Mariya but there’s no way her makeup kit can be that powderful [sic - you'll get this pun only if you're fluent in Singlish]. It’s not a far stretch of the imagination for a pretty girl to look like a pretty boy (think Ouran’s Haruhi) but it takes a very very pretty boy to make a decently pretty girl, much less the school idol. While I do think of the catgirls, I just couldn’t let it slide. Until the super deformed (SD) mode kicked in. With the show not taking itself seriously at all, it was hard for me to continue being pedantic.
OtoBoku is probably the most recent example where SD is an important and successful part of the animation. In other cases, Continue reading ‘Super Deformed to the rescue!’
One of my favourite episodes of this series, not least because of the OP, Shoujo Q. The main story line relates to Himeko being taken over by the Matango mushroom alien (which had replaced her ahoge since a few episodes back) and Becky being traumatised by Matango-Himeko no longer loving her. The scene caps, however, celebrate other stuff. Such as Kurumi’s lesbian tendencies and turning the yuri goggles on Serizawa x Kurusu.
Mainly a set-up episode. Greenback Jane is threatened by her employers to come up with better counterfeit USD [ISO 4217]. The boss demonstrates his impatience by killing her assistant. Later she escapes and, being totally unfamiliar with Roanapur, seeks refuge at the Church of Violence. Not knowing the town and spurning his guide’s advice, the boss - with the impropable name of Elvis - starts a gun battle that he has scurry away from. Jane explains the situation to Revy, Sisters Yolunda, Eda and Brother Rico; she leaves at the end. Elvis hires a cowboy to track her down and he gathers a motley crew of the Roanarpur underworld including Shen Ho (from the Guerillas in the Jungle arc) and an undertaker in the style of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Sharon Kinsella, currently Visiting Professor at MIT’s Dept of Foreign Languages and Literature, delivered the 4th Chino Kaori lecture on the above-mentioned title at my alma mater, SOAS, on 2006-10-20. Among Kinsella’s published work, her most famous to date is Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society (1999). The lecture will be published by the Sainsbury Institute at a later date and draws on material from her forthcoming book, Girls and Male Imagination: Fantasies of rejuvenation in contemporary Japan.
Kinsella traces images of female revolt, manifested through acts of violence and sexual liberation, in various media - films, novels, manga and anime and the accompanying dicussion among journalistic and intellectual circles. She points out the irony that this cultural material and the academic discourse is produced almost exclusively by older men. While many of these left-leaning intellectuals claim to be giving a sympathetic voice to the theme of feminist liberation, Kinsella questions if their subjectivity can be truly representative and that their efforts may, perversely, result in another male appropriation of the female voice for its own purposes.
Continue reading ‘Female revolt in male cultural imagination in contemporary Japan’
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